NETSCOUT nGeniusONE Reviews

We use the product to monitor infrastructure devices and troubleshoot application behavior if there is any issue.

The solution helps me understand the issues and troubleshoot.

If the connection doesn’t work, the product provides us with a code, for example, 5000. Then, we have to search the internet to understand what this number means. It would be better if the product gave us a code and its meaning while identifying issues.

The solution needs enhancements. We need to reconfigure the tool if we have a connection with dissimilar ports. The tool should ideally capture all traffic. However, it is unable to analyze unknown ports. I have to reconfigure and refine the tool to monitor the connection. This process is a waste of time.

I have been using the solution for six months.

I rate the stability a six or seven out of ten. The product crashed a few times within six months of implementation.

The solution is scalable. It works the same when we add more components. I rate the scalability a ten out of ten. Almost 50 employees are using the solution in our organization.

We need regular support from the vendor. The support is good.

Positive

The solution is not easy to install.

It took us three to four hours to deploy the tool. We needed only one engineer to deploy it.

The product is too expensive compared to other products.

We also use SolarWinds. We are trying the tool because our organization needs multiple monitoring solutions. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

We use the solution when our customers have problems with their databases or communications. We use it to look at packages and packets and verify the behaviour of the NOC, the server, and the traffic, looking for a pattern that might identify the issue and what's happening now.

We started using the product because our customers had some problems with the network. We made changes to the network and made it stable. However, the customer told us there were still some errors. Then the people from the database told us the problem was the network, not the database. The only way to verify it was the database and not the network was by putting a sniffer in it. And that's why we use NETSCOUT.

The new version of the solution is like a grid, onto which we can put traffic and graph its behaviour for a certain amount of time. We can then use the behaviour, from one or two hours or maybe seven days, or 30 days. Looking at the results, allows us to verify whether anything is wrong. 

There is a big issue with the special way they use InfiniStream to store data. The InfiniStream has a certain capacity. So our customer centre asks why we don't store all the information that uses InfiniStream in Vblock or something like that. And NETSCOUT says that we need to store those data in a special way. And we use a special appliance called InfiniStream. So this kind of storage is not so big. For example, our customer has saved all the data, restored all the information, and backed it up elsewhere. For example, if something happened in the past month, we can see the package because the storage is a kind of FIFO. So we have a very limited space to see the previous days.

We've been using this solution for about six years.

The product is very good. We have very few problems. And if we do have any issues,  NETSCOUT gives us very good support. They have the right engineers that know the issues. And if anything is wrong with a device, you get an RMA. 

The solution is as scalable as we or our customer wish. But we don't plan to increase the usage for the moment because of the expense.

We have six people using the solution. 

We currently need three guys to deploy the solution and one to maintain it.

Tech support is good. We don't have any problem with that. I opened one case, and they solved it.

Positive

The initial setup was complex because we needed to know the package's source and destination when we tried to monitor certain conversations. So when we are tracing something or trying to fix one issue or error, we need to know precisely how the communication is, where the sources and the destinations are, etc. So we need to talk with the person that develops the applications, the database, and the network. , we need to know specifically the part of the network the package is going through. With all this information and with NETSCOUT, we can very easily solve the issue or try to find the error, but for specific communication.

When we started with the customer, NETSCOUT directly supported us with the implementation. And after that, we were all on our own. 

It took us six months to deploy the product.

I don't know exactly how the licencing works. I think it's about the ports from InfiniStream. For example, if you have five InfiniStreams, each InfiniStream has four ports, so I think you need to acquire a licence for 20 nodes.

We can get everything in a bundle. But the price is different if you acquire virtual InfiniStream or vSTREAM. But in the end, the price is only for acquisition; it's not a licence. The license is for the ports, one per InfiniStream.

I advise anyone wanting to use the solution to have one completely dedicated engineer. Here in Mexico, we have one engineer who's essential in many things. When a company acquires NETSCOUT, they need specific people responsible only for that and not involved with anything else.

On a scale of one to 10, I would give NETSCOUT nGeniusONE nine.

The use case depends on the use case of the customer. For example, service providers will check the subscriber control plan or maybe the user input. However, banking customers might use it for their internet banking service.

The most valuable feature of NETSCOUT nGeniusONE is it helps customer to understand what risks are in their network. For example, if a customer has some wrong configurations. It could cost them some critical services to slow down.

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE can improve the detection of what area of the infrastructure could be having an issue, such as an application, server, or network. It needs to find evidence of a fault.

I have been using NETSCOUT nGeniusONE for approximately 10 years.

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE is stable.

The scalability of NETSCOUT nGeniusONE can be good but it depends on the customer's budget.

In my company, we have 12 people using the solutions.

Most of the support agents are good.

The initial setup of NETSCOUT nGeniusONE for enterprise is simple. It only takes one to two hours to complete. However, the time for the implementation can increase depending on the use case of the customer. For example, there are some proprietary customer applications or they have special network designs. We need to receive more information from customers to discuss it with them to decide how we can fine-tune the system.

For a service provider, it will be more complicated because in one total solution they will combine five or more NETSCOUT solutions inside.

For some customers, we need to work with them to receive many parts, such as some applications, which we will need to speak to the applications team. Additionally, there could be some services we need to monitor in the database, and in this case, we have to contact their database team.

We require more than two people for the deployment and maintenance of the solution.

My clients have received a return on investments and have expanded.

I rate the price of NETSCOUT nGeniusONE a four out of five.

My advice to others is if you need a solution to monitor your critical events or critical service based on an IP environment, then you must use this kind of solution

I rate NETSCOUT nGeniusONE a nine out of ten.

My primary use case of this solution is the monitoring of network devices, security devices, servers, and so on.

There is a need to reduce the complexity of this solution.

The stability of this product is ok.

Technical support for this product has been ok, with no issues.

The initial setup was complex, and deployment took around six months.

I used consultants for deployment.

This product is suitable for high-level enterprises, but I would not recommend it for small-to-medium enterprises. I would rate this solution as five out of ten.

Most of the time, the use case is if, for example, the network is slow or an application is slow and you don't know why, and you need something to look for the root cause of the problem. With NETSCOUT, it's very easy to check where the problem is located. You can uncover if it is in the network or the application or the server.

It's easy to use and easy to pinpoint where the problems are if ever something is slow. 

Most of the time the customers are complaining that the system is slow and you need to know why something is slow. It will give you insight into the underlying issue, which is very helpful.

The installation process is straightforward. 

Technical support is very good.

The solution could do more for security. It should offer more security-related features. 

We have had NETSCOUT for a long time. In the past, it was part of Fluke Networks, and then Fluke Networks was bought by NETSCOUT. Then, we were working together with NETSCOUT,  acting as a reseller for NETSCOUT solutions. We have been working with them for more than 10 years and of course before that, with Fluke Networks.

Technical support has been good. They do not need to improve it. We've been satisfied with the level of service on offer. 

The initial setup is very straightforward. It's not overly complex or difficult. I found the process to be very simple. 

It's a hybrid solution. You can use both cloud and on-premises deployment models. 

We are not the users of this solution. Rather, we are the reseller. We are a local reseller for these kinds of products within Belgium. We also have a company in the Netherlands, it's for the Benelux region. We have customers in Benelux and we are acting as a reseller and we sell the solutions and the support which we do ourselves. For me personally, I'm located in Belgium. I handle the Belgium market and Luxembourg, however, I have colleagues in the Netherlands and they do the Netherlands market.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten. I've been pretty pleased with its capabilities overall.

I would recommend the solution to other users and organizations.

This solution has been implemented at banks and retailers to focus on network-based application performance management.

Aligning the solution with a visibility layer (taps, aggregation taps, and packet brokers - Ixia and Cubro), NMs system (Sintrex) we were able to deliver information relating to various applications and their behaviour.

Creating an environment where you triage a problem quickly and provide valuable information allows for improved MTTR.

This allows for a cross-silo approach, enhanced visibility, which enhances IT to better service the business.

We have partnered with Netscout over many years with various solutions - TruView, nGeniusOne, Infinistream, XG, etc.

With the focus on customer-defined applications and triggers we have been able to provide important information to clients regarding their application performance.

It has played an integral part in providing valuable information in a critical arena.

The ability to use pre-defined applications and configure client-specific applications allows for a comprehensive solution that enables all teams within the IT organization.

The combination of triggers with the ability to generate alarms.

The ability of the dashboards is useful for discover, mapping and understanding of application behaviour.

The ability to define client-specific applications.

If required, you can view up to a millisecond of what the behavior of the application is.

The ability to give insight into assigning the problem, with relevant information, to the correct team.

Detailed reporting that can be built with various perspectives and metrics.

Various dashboards can be built to service various applications or security teams.

The initial deployment is tedious and requires a lot of build, deployment and configuration time. Experience is key to a successful deployment.

It is critical to work with the network team to understand how the data flows across the estate to ensure that you tap, aggregate, de-capsulate, de-crypt, and de-duplicate correctly.

From these points, you need to ensure that the logical strategy and configuration suits the correct reporting and visibility as to ensure that you get the most out of any potential logical context.

It is also important to ensure that you spend time to understand the applications you want to profile and work with the application owners to ensure that everything is aligned correctly.

We have been using this solution at multiple clients for many years.

In general, the stability is good, but we have had one or two incidents where specialized support was required.

The solution can scale in most directions, bandwidth, hardware, virtual taps, etc.

We have a good relationship with the vendor. They are always willing to help, but due to the complexity of the environment solving problems can take some time.

We have previously made use of nMetrics, Spyke and older versions of the Netscout product range and still make use of ExtraHop Reveal (x).

We do however try to fit the need of the customer to the best solution and the vendor they prefer.

Initial setup and configuration is complex and tedious and requires a methodical approach with experienced engineers.

For complex implementations, we rely on the vendor for more support.

The return on investment is directly linked to the deployment, configuration, and management of the solution.

If you make it a priority, you will experience good ROI.

It is important to spread the cost across the various IT silos as this solution works as an umbrella to provide information to all teams.

Try to target major aggregation points in your network to deliver the best potential data to the solution. You can from that point start to target specific areas to resolve specific issues or gain particular insight into certain areas.

Do not forget applications traverse North-South as well as East-West and in layers of those. Think about your typical WAN breakout, Layer 2 connections, Virtualized environments, and servers supported by back-to-back connections (eg. web server supported by DB server, with a direct connection).

Sintrex Flow Module, ExtraHop Reveal (x) - the reason we went with nGeniusOne was because the client has that they require a specific solutiion that NetScout answers, already deployed other Netscout solutions or that they had a specific function in mind (eg. InfiniStream tagging)

It is always important to understand the problems you are trying to solve, what insight you are trying to gain and that this is a solution for the business, not just a specific IT silo or team. 

It's deployed at a customer in the banking environment and it monitors the perimeter edge in the data center. It's used for visibility inside the environment as well. The traffic is only being sent via TAP data currently. We don't have any NetFlow data to the system, as yet. We have the NETSCOUT TruView system in and that performs for TAP data and NetFlow to monitor the branches.

For some of the applications we've managed to drill down and get more granular data, because it provides such small granularity — a microsecond or a millisecond of data — that you can actually get finer response-time detail out of it. That helps a lot.

It has improved some of the visibility of some of the unified communications with the ability to drill down into finer time increments in the packet data. We are able to search through those and get those Wireshark-types of views, with some extra flexibility and visibility on packet data or wire data.

The quick drill-down views are similar to Wireshark views. Those are quite nice, with the views on how you interpret some of the data. The granularity of how far you can drill down into milliseconds or microseconds is a very nice feature. It actually stores quite a lot of data in its database. It enables drilling down for reporting.

The solution transforms packet wire data into real-time data that is ready to act on. We've set some of the alerts to alert on it. We can look at that packet data, or we'll use scenario-based alerts, to then further drill down and see what the system has picked up as an anomaly or a scenario that's being analyzed by the system. We can investigate it further and see how we can resolve the issue or alert on it for the client.

We received some documentation to integrate it with ServiceNow. We're busy looking at that for the near future to integrate into that or another vendor's ticket system, and then alert on things in real-time, so there's less delay from our interpreting of data first. And then we can act on it.

They can improve still on the workflows, document their workflows that are commonly used.

Also, if you do backups of the system or try to do configuration changes, there are a lot of different formats that you need to separately interpret. It doesn't flow nicely. With config backup, for example, there are a few variants that you have to collect. Otherwise, you have to use the system backup, which we haven't restored yet, so I don't know exactly how that process works.

There are one or two things for the grids that would be nice to have. And it would be nice to be able to change some of the metrics, here and there, on the normal overviews.

Currently it's working. We had a lot of issues in the beginning with patches that we had to load, but that was more of the teething and learning how to configure the system as well. It's not quite the same as the TruView which has end-user response metrics. The nGeniusONE doesn't quite do the same thing.

It's a more technical tool compared to what we're used to, or what the client is used to with TruView. For some of the stuff we've seen we have had to build multiple sections or multiple pages to get a view of the environment or branch or application.

On a scale of one to 10, the solution's ability to transform packet wire data into well-structured, contextual data is a seven. There is room for improvement. It goes back to the workflows. We don't know some of the workflows yet, and it's not something that you can just read up in the manual. There is some stuff in the help manual and online, but it's to a point where you need to purchase extra training and services from them. You can't just go and read up on it yourself and learn from A to Z and then, if you require extra training or certification, you could go further in-depth into that. That's part of the business model, I assume.

Also, it's not always the case that the solution provides the right people in our organization with the right information in a single pane of glass view. There are times where we would want to get a different view on some of the service dashboards. We can't really get all the views that we would want on a single pane of glass.

Overall, there is room for improvement, but so far it is a useful system.

We deployed NETSCOUT nGeniusONE last year around April, so it's just over a year now.

Currently we're running quite stable. There were a few hiccups in the beginning with stuff not working. But currently we're running more or less stable. We are running on version 6.2.2. There are a few useful things in 6.3, but we were advised not to go that route yet because it's not 100 percent stable. Our sales engineer said to hold on, just to see how some of their other clients experience it and see how many issues are still being noted in the system before we move over to that newer version.

We'll probably increase visibility in future because it needs to replace TruView. Currently we are only using packet TAP data. Later on, as NetFlow and those things evolve, we will need to move over to NetFlow collectors on the system as well. Currently we're using them on TruView.

And we need to expand to some of the newer data centers that the client has moved into, as well as the cloud section. We need to expand into those as soon as the client has a bit more budget and they are happy that the system is working and the views and the consolidated views are giving them what they want. Then they'll expand more on the system.

The key thing for us is to get the VAR service up and running, which should be starting from today. They've sorted out their remote access. That took us a few months just to get into the banking environment with all the nondisclosures and security checks. We are quite happy to get that started and to see how they can assist us on the system. We want to do a sanity check on the system to see what we've missed.

We have an account with them and each engineer has an account where they can log TAC cases, and our sales engineer sees some of the stuff that we seldom hear and assists where he can. Otherwise, we work with the guys overseas. It depends which section of the system it is for unified communication. Cases have been escalated, eventually, to assist configuring some of the things.

We've had a few issues with one of the InfiniStream storage units, and that took a long time to resolve. The guys are still learning some of the things on the system themselves, but that eventually got resolved. But that may also depend on the support model we took.

Once you get to the higher-tier support guys, your issue normally gets resolved quite quickly.

We've been using TruView. We've known for a while that we would need to switch because it was an old Fluke Networks product which was bought by or moved to NETSCOUT. We knew at some point in time it was going end-of-life. We need to keep it up and running for as long as possible, at least another two or three years, until the end of the contract, and see how long it lasts after that. Slowly but surely we'll migrate to nGeniusONE as we expand visibility.

The setup was a bit complex, documentation-wise. There is a long list of documentation just to deploy the system, with a lot of variations. There's tons of documentation. Their portals reflect all the documentation and you need to go through various sections of the documentation to find what you're actually looking for.

We managed to get it in in a weekend. It was a relatively short time just to get the equipment in. The InfiniStream we took uses attached storage. It has an IPMI which wasn't mentioned in the original deployment documents. I managed to eventually find out what the base system is, a Supermicro server base. I then managed to get documentation around how to configure it and what the default IP address is for those. I had to configure that, because there are certain things that you can't do if you don't have that to update the firmware of your storage array — shut it down, restart it, those types of things. That wasn't on the original one-page install glossy.

It's a lot different than what we're used to in terms of the various sections that you need to configure. The workflow for some of the stuff could use some improvement. It sometimes feels like the system is silo-based or sectional-based, and that it was then all put in one system. There isn't just one place you can configure your application site or a quick-start "how-to." If you want to configure an application and then get it on your dashboard or your service views, it would be nice if it gave you an auto wizard which would say, "You want to configure an application? Okay, next." You would fill in what is required, click "next" to get you to the next step and keep on following the same workflow so that you can't really deviate. If you know which sections you want to configure, maybe then you would configure it manually, but a wizard-based workflow that's set out to be followed would be good.

As we learn stuff we've transferred the knowledge to our client and they have learned themselves as well, playing with the system. As they run into a workflow issue, then we try to assist or we contact our sales engineer to ask if there is a better workflow for some of this, and how to get to the pane that we would want to be on more quickly. For some of it, there was a quicker way, and for some of them the system is built in such a way that there is not a quicker way to get to some of the views.

It requires quite a lot of staff to set up and manage the tool; there's quite a learning curve. What we normally like to do is load it offsite, deploy the system, prepare it properly, get the base configuration on, and load at least some of the applications, but we didn't have the luxury of that kind of time. It took us a bit of time compared to what we've been used to on the TruView. We tried to configure the applications, but it's not quite the same. In workflows we've missed things here and there, things like going to a different view to associate applications to a site or an interface. We missed that at times. That's where the automated workflow wizard would help a lot, to make it easier for anyone to use the system, to climb in and start configuring it.

We're still busy streamlining and working on our alerting, to get those properly set up. NETSCOUT, from their side, is PoC-ing the VAR service to assist us for three or six months in streamlining the system, see where we're running short, and also to do system checks and see what else they're going to have to improve on the system.

We're not really a proactive system yet because we're still trying to define some of the things. The system is not at a scale where it can monitor each and every thing. There are a lot of things in the environment that we learn and get to know of on a daily basis, as they deploy new things. There are also things that we've not heard of because some of the environments are still silo-based.

I don't know what the client is looking at, because they can acquire from other vendors.  Because we're part of the networks team, we're more focused on the actual network component.

It's not an easy system, it's a very technical system. There are some views that you could get for a management or objective overview. Even our client mentioned that it's more a technical tool. That comes back to the workflows and the drill-down and the amount of time you spend to drill down into a scenario. That sometimes makes it too long in a real-time troubleshooting scenario or focus session. That makes it a bit difficult. If there's an outage in the environment they might start looking at you because they're waiting for you to provide information. I assume that would improve a bit when VAR service comes on board to show us what we're missing and how we can set up scenarios or extra alerting on the system to improve drill-down and the time to respond to or the time to resolve issues.

It does auto-discover some of the stuff. I don't think we've really used everything that's available. We've used some of the auto-discovery for URLs or web-related links, as it picks them up. We've used some of those and then we further define it. I'm not sure if there's another way or extra things that can auto-discover. Normally we'll get an application and environment from the client, and then we'll define it from there, or we'll use TruView to look at the NetFlow data to see what ports, for example, are being used. Then we will interact with the client to further see what is there. Or we can use nGenius' packet data and pull down what ports are being used from there. Then we can go back to the client and say, "You said port 123," for example, "is being used. We see 123 and another port. Is this other port also part of your application, or what function does it have in your applications?"

As for whether nGeniusONE helps us to get to root cause quickly, it's "yes" and "no." It fits in more with some of the workflows that we're still learning or we may not have the correct workflow. We've learned quite a lot over the last year or so but there is some room to improve, or it might be something that we don't know about; how to navigate a bit faster and better. One thing the client did say, if you compare it to TruView, is that with TruView you get to most of your issues in three clicks. In nGenius you need a few more clicks just to get to where you want to be. And sometimes you need to take a different route through the system to navigate to a different view.

When it comes to seeing a measurable decrease in mean time to repair, or mean time to know, there might be some workflows we're missing, that we don't know. We've used the system now for just over a year, and we're constantly learning new ways to configure the system and new workflows and how to improve our troubleshooting time. But compared to our older TruView system, it takes a bit longer to navigate to certain sections of the system or down to where we want to be, to the packet data, or to drill down into some of the applications.

We use nGeniusONE for Microsoft Teams. There is a case that we want the VAR service to take on for us to tie up some of the communications from external to internal Teams calls as they pass through the firewall. We're going to look at that to see what the VAR can assist us with. The client needs to expand on some of its TAP-ing visibility as well when, in the near future, they change their design.

As far as I know the solution has not enabled us to consolidate tools, because our client uses various systems. An example is Dynatrace as an internal banking application that they use for Layer 7 and agent-based monitoring on some of the servers and applications. And we still use TruView. Then they're constantly expanding to see where they can add something to fill in gaps. They're busy PoC-ing ThousandEyes to get some visibility on a different front. On the network side, we monitor the network components to clear that and make sure that it runs, or assist if there are notable response-time issues, to try and resolve where the issue would be located.

From our company, which is from the vendor side, we have about five or six users. In our client's organization we're expanding every now and then, but currently there are about 50 users, maybe more.

Because of COVID, everything is standing still currently. We started building grids and consolidated views to see what we can display on the centralized screens to improve visibility for Office 365, and those types of things. We would like to get that extra NOC-type of visibility, or an overview of the environment for certain sections. The client's strategy was that the more people that have access to the system, the more people will call us to inform us that there's something wrong in the system or in the environment, before that system even alerts us. The user base plays a big role in how the organization runs.

We have an extended operations team in India with engineers running the day-to-day tools to monitor around 150 sites across the globe. We have the MPLS and DIA for the bandwidth initiation. If there is a bandwidth alert, the engineers will look into it and take the necessary actions.

It is mostly deployed on-prem. We have a few NETSCOUT applications (five percent) that we have moved off to the AWS Cloud. We were in the process of migrating one of our data centers to the cloud. We just started working on that.

We have a direct internet connection (DIA) on most of the sites and nGeniusONE helped us with reviewing bandwidth depletion from the sites. Most of them were utilizing like 30 Mbps, but we were adding 100 Mbps. We went and collected data from all the sites using nGeniusONE, then we initiated a project for refacing the Mbps bandwidth, which gave us business revenue improvements. We reduced most of the sites' bandwidth and a lot of our spending (on unused bandwidth). This solution has saved us more than $50,000 a month and freed up 30 percent of our bandwidth.

It's able to give me real-time data. We were working on a project a couple of days ago where we were able to compare the nGeniusONE data and the packet data. Initially, the network team was using the nGeniusONE tool. However, right now, most application owners and the application team have access to nGeniusONE. They want to see how the application performs under real-time. Therefore, we are definitely moving towards have the application team use it as well. The management is also really happy.

Especially with the pandemic situation, we asked most users to work from home. We set up a lot of SSL VPN clients on the AWS Cloud. We were just using the nGeniusONE to monitor the bandwidth and the packet flow to the data center. Then, users were reporting a lot of issues connecting through the SSL VPN client. So, we did some analysis using nGeniusONE. We tweaked and removed a lot of the bottlenecks, allowing the user to work from home comfortably. We also set it up AWS cloud to give us more back and forth data and users connected through SSL VPN. Based on that, we increased the licensing count on the SSL VPN because we saw a lot of users connecting through one region's VPN. Therefore, nGeniusONE has definitely helped us a lot during this pandemic time.

This solution is good about providing us with increased visibility while conducting an IT deployment. We set up a lot of wireless connections for our R&D users to get real-time data across the globe when they access the data center. nGeniusONE showed us how the traffic is going through the MPLS, and we can move that traffic to the DIA.

Using the nGeniousONE, we found out that most of our sites were not marking the traffic. Therefore, we took the packet capture from nGeniusONE to Cisco and worked with them to fix it.

We use it VoIP, video, and monitoring the contact center application performance. It has helped us with uptime and the user experience.

The salary dashboards and contributions are the most valuable features. The graph tells you an application's performance. On the graph, it will tell you the bandwidth for a particular site. Therefore, it is so easy for us to go and look up.

If a lot of traffic from one site is hitting AWS Cloud or the data center, then we want to know which client is utilizing the most bandwidth. We will work with nGeniusONE to troubleshoot the issue.

The learning curve is definitely good. We used to have quarterly training. Most of my team members in India enlisted for training and have attended it.

Initially, we were having a lot of issues with bugs when using version 6.1.1. There were a lot of problems with the dashboard causing confusion. We worked with our SE and the NETSCOUT engineering team to fix the visibility with the data. There should be a patch release to fix this issue. However, this seems to be working fine for us right now after the 6.2.2 upgrade. 

Almost five years.

If you rank from one to 10, I would give it a nine for stability. It is a really stable tool.

nGeniusONE increased our application and network uptime. nGeniusONE is pretty quick and stable. Whenever the Internet goes down, it will automatically alert us. Then, the team will immediately work on fixing it with the service provider, like CenturyLink. The network uptime has increase by 20 to 30 percent.

There is a 10 member team dedicated to maintenance of the solution.

Scalable is fine. The licensing part is not hard-coded with the server. Whenever we want to increase the licenses, we just talk to our NETSCOUT agent again. We'll get more licensing and keep it going. So, it is definitely a scalable solution.

We have around 160 users accessing this tool per month. 20 percent of the users are the admin team who manage the tool. they just log into the tool and check application performance.

We have on a dedicated engineer from NETSCOUT who works on our projects. He is always available on-call if there is a new site deployment going on. I can call him on his work number, even on weekends, and he'll always be available. This is something that we worked out in our licensing.

We were using a different vendor product (Riverbed Cascade) before nGeniusONE. After the nGeniusONE implementation, the time to resolve a ticket and the time to identify an issue were pretty quick. With nGeniusONE implemented on all 150 of our sites, we now have real-time packet collection, a probe on all our sites that collects the data, and historical data for the past three months that can be graphically represented. These are all advantages compared to our previous solution.

We found nGeniusONE gave us more visibility for application and performance management than Riverbed.

The initial setup was straightforward. We used to buy all our devices in North America, then ship them across the globe. A couple of the site setups were tough, but it is fine now.

The initial deployment took six months. Then, we started slowly rolling out to different regions, like EMEA and APAC. The overall complete nGeniusONE solution post-deployment took us 15 to 18 months to complete. The extended time frame was because we started buying five to six probes every quarter, then repeated the process. We did not purchase all the devices at once. That was the company's vision.

The initial deploy took us 15 days or a month. We would just set it up inside one of our data centers and the install probes.

I worked directly with the NETSCOUT SE. The deployment takes one SE from NETSCOUT and three engineers from our side.

We have all the NETSCOUT products, and everything is controlled through nGeniusONE, like PULSE Server, Collector, etc. This has saved us money because we don't have to go and purchase a different server or management tool for nGeniusONE.

It does automatic discovery, but we are not doing it because we couldn't configure the application. The plan is to use this more in the future.

We are focusing on the different products from NETSCOUT right now. We have started installing PFS switches on most sites. We just did a PoC where we are planning to roll PFS to 10 of our sites in upcoming quarter.

We haven't integrated nGeniusONE with other solutions.

I would rate this solution as a nine out of 10.